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Katie Jones
Cozza has no love, none. __TOC__ Katie Heather Jones Nicknames/Aliases: Katie likes to tell people that her full name is Katharine and that her mother named her for Katharine Hepburn. The reality is, Katie was born just that - Katie. The rest of her name is invention, chosen when she was nine to try and fit in. And once the lie, as simple as it was, had been created, it just seemed easier to keep on with it. In terms of actual nicknames, it's always Katie, Kate, Katharine or Jones, never Kat or Kitty. Birthdate: April 2, 1982 Occupation: Katie works as a fixer connected to the Network, though she's been known to deal in information as well. She's the girl you go to if you're looking for a job or if you want one done. She also sells information to any person or body that will pay for it, whether that be the Daily Prophet, the Regulators or the Unspeakables. On occasion, she's been known to take other positions in criminal heists - she's not afraid to tag along or do what's necessary to get a job done - but generally speaking, she prefers what she does. Note, she does not deal in information about the Ministry or individuals in it - she leaves that to those like the Sphinx who have better sources and who, frankly, she believes would cut her throat if she infringed too heavily on their turfs. Home: The Joneses live in a flat in Hackney above Jones Pawn and a pub so old that no one knows the name because you can't quite read the sign and the bartender's senile. Their property sprawls out to include an overgrown fenced patch of green next to an alley and a garage, which Kate has taken up as her own. There's no keeping up with them to be had. Finances: Katie would love to reap the benefits of her wicked ways but the reality of it is that information dealing doesn't pay as well as it could, not when you spend much of the wages supporting a failing pawn shop and a useless younger brother. She makes enough to keep up appearances but the Joneses are normally about two months away from losing everything they own. Household: Katie lives with her father, Sean; his girlfriend, Bridget (who's only six years older than her, which she finds absolutely disgusting); her younger brother, Gage, who just turned 22, and her younger "half-sister", Ruby, 3. (Ruby was named after Bridge's favorite character on EastEnders - Katie believes this says all one needs to know about her father's girlfriend.) Her biological mother, Pippa, died when Katie was 5. Magic Blood Status: Muggleborn, to the best of her knowledge. She once suspected her mother to have been wizarding but she has no proof of this. House Alumni: Hufflepuff, entered school in 1993. Did not take her NEWTs. Wand: 9" sycamore, sphinx tail hair core, extremely springy to the touch. Katie's wand isn't an Ollivander's, but a Gregorovitch, due to her father's lack of knowledge about wand buying and the family's lack of money. External Appearance: Katie's appearance is continually shifting due to her propensity for using disguises as needed and a natural love for dying her hair. Despite all of this, she normally manages to look young for her age, something that she hates. When attempting to give herself a new look, Katie tends to only worry with the surface details - hair, clothing, makeup - knowing from experience that it's all people really look at. She often shies from clothing that is too distinctive as a rule of thumb. Generally speaking, when out in public, Katie tends to keep herself somewhat together in terms of appearance, often applying makeup or wearing heels in an attempt to make herself look more legitimate or upper-class than she is. This typically falters the minute she opens her mouth. She swears more in an hour than most people do in a month and while it's not badly meant, it's often something people find startling from a woman's lips. The clothing that she wears at home is entirely different than anything she would wear in public. To be honest, Kate is most at home as a slob and a garish one at that. Garish orange jumpers, jangling anklets, pink hair thrust up in a badly done ponytail, painter's overalls three years old with a big patch on the knee, and bare feet with chipped polish of a different colour on every toe - that would describe Katie's natural state. She loves colour, she loves things that are bright and vivid and brilliant and when at home, she doesn't shy from that love, in part because everything else around is so grey, gritty and dirty. Continually cold, Katie layers constantly and generally has two or three pieces of clothing on top of one another. Even in summer, she often throws an extra layer on simply because she's so used to the weight of all those clothes that she feels a bit naked without them. She can often be seen chewing gum of some sort or another, not because she likes the taste, but because the effort of masticating keeps her jaw warm. First Impression: "I think I've seen that bird around before but I can't quite place her." (Note: this assumes said person hasn't seen her at home and that she hasn't yet opened her mouth.) Internal Political Views: Katie is a roaring but lazy liberal. She feels strongly on issues like the rights of werewolves to humane treatment, the inadequacy of health care for house elves, and the need of wizarding intervention in third world countries to keep young witches from having their powers suppressed. But her advocacy ends with picketing and making a sign. She tries to make a difference but she doesn't really believe that she can and so she's easily swayed from one cause to the other, when she spends time advocating for any cause at all. Quirks/Habits: Loves old newspapers and has plastered the walls of the garage where she sleeps with them. Loves bad movies and Quentin Tarantino. She doesn't think the first is inclusive of the second. Deliberately dresses in mismatched clothing when at home or claims that she does so deliberately (the truth is that she became punk one day because she forgot to do the laundry). Smokes occasionally but does so shyly and never drinks or does drugs. A bad dresser and knows it. Her left eye twitches when she's frustrated - not a lot but enough to notice if one cares. Dislikes being photographed. Doesn't cry. Hates her brother's addictive personality but doesn't know how to deal with it and so doesn't. Likes rainstorms, can’t swallow pills, despises unicorns, wishes she was taller. Strengths: Excellent liar, skilled at disguising herself, quick wit, strong sense of self. Stubborn. A survivor. Good sense of direction, finds it easy to navigate in urban environments. Weaknesses: Easily manipulated by those she cares for but is intelligent enough to know that they are doing it, sometimes becomes too intensely focused on what she's doing and has difficulty giving other things that same level of attention, inability to let things or people go, fear of attachment, questions authority figures, uses inordinate amounts of profanity, lies consistently even when she knows it's morally incorrect, horrible at accents, miserable singing voice but will still sing to irritate people. Philias: Katie loves crowds, not because of an innate desire to be social but because of the sense of community and also the lack of "aloneness" she feels when among them. One can get lost in a crowd but one can also stand out among one. For her, the sound of people milling about can have the same comforting effect that other people feel when they hear the sounds of waves or lullabies. It's not uncommon for her just to go and sit on the tube for hours when she's upset, just riding trains back and forth across the city until she's calmed. Fears: It's a strange fear to have but Katie has become afraid of crying. She remembers the strange period of her life after her mother died and her inability to stop crying all the time and she's become terrified of going back to that. And yet, at the same time, the harshness of some aspects of her life took her tears from her and that bothers her as well. She feels as if she lost something when she steeled herself against the shedding of tears and doesn't know how to find that medium. She also has mild automatonophobia but it's certainly something she can cope with and she'd never tell anyone about it. Hobbies/Interests: * Poker, Exploding Snap and Card Tricks - She loves gambling for the fact that it forces her to exercise her mind and social skills at the same time and presents a challenge. * Protesting - Hand in hand with her love of crowds, protesting a good cause is something that Katie likes to do when she thinks she won't be caught at it. * Swivenhodge - It's something that's not Quidditch but still holds her interest, perhaps because she got all Quidditched-out in school. * Ice Skating - She's miserable at it but likes it anyhow. * Deep love for cryptomancy (magical codes) and ancient runes, despite the fact that she did not go on to take her NEWTS. Reads about it on her own passionately, practicing in her room at night. Favorite Belongings: * A battered old copy of Where the Wild Things Are from her childhood. * Her bed, actually a bunkbed that she rarely brings blokes home to because she doubts anyone would much appreciate it. * Her signed photograph of Celestina Warbeck, inscribed "To an enthusiastic singer, love Celestina." * Her mother's wedding ring, worn on a loose, low chain around her neck, hidden underneath her clothing. Favorite Places: * New Piccadilly Cafe, cafe in London * The garage that she lives in. It's drafty but it's large and she can paint at will. * The Foundling Museum * Mornington Crescent tube station Secrets: She's never killed a man. History Invention. If there was one word Katie Jones would use to describe her life, that would be the one. Of course, she wouldn't actually say that to the person asking - instead, she'd be more likely to toss out a phrase like "useful," or "smashing," or "dramatic," depending on what the interviewer (or parole officer) wanted to hear - but it would be a relatively accurate description. "Inventing" was the term her father used when he changed their last name from time to time, or when he gave their landlord one excuse or another for why they couldn't make rent. "Inventing" was the word that her mother used for the fairy stories that she spun to her daughter, tales of castles and princesses and hospitals where people got better, rather than sicker. "Inventing" was the word her brother used in secondary when he got caught mixing glue and paint thinner in an effort to make something new to get high off of. Yes, Katie's life has been one of invention in every sense of the word, so much so that she doesn't even know sometimes which parts of her past are real and what has been constructed by other people. Katie's early life consisted of traveling in the back seat of a car for most of what she remembers. Her thoughts, when she thinks of the days before school, are of her mother, Pippa, smoking behind the wheel of their old Citroen while her father, Sean, sketched out plans for a new life on wadded up napkins and her baby brother flailed in his carseat, smashing bits of cookie in her hair. The pattern was so usual as to seem normal to Katie - they stayed in a place until they got evicted, they threw everything into the back of the car in the middle of the night, then they drove around and slept in the car until there was somewhere new to be. Sometimes it took hours, sometimes it took months. But it was the same, strangely comforting squash of people always. But then things changed. Looking back on it, Katie couldn't tell you when they changed - she was only five at the time. It was simply that suddenly her mum began to tell her stories. Strange, fanciful things which were more colorful and vivid than anything Pippa had ever expressed. And Katie and Gage loved the changes in their mother - loved that sharp words had gotten blunted and that she now always had the time to sit and talk to them. They were too young to notice that their mother was talking to them from a hospital bed. Pippa Jones died two months before Katie's sixth birthday of a brain tumor, though there was no explaining this to the girl at the time. Kate remembers this period as one of tears - she kept crying, unable to stop from bursting into sobs over anything that reminded her of her mother. Her father didn't know how to handle it - much less how to support a family without Pippa's income to supplement his - and so the odd jobs that Sean had been doing to keep the family afloat turned into gradually more criminal endeavors. Unable to afford a sitter, he began to leave Katie alone to mind Gage at night, figuring that it would "force her to snap out of it." Surprisingly, it did. There wasn't much minding to be had of Gage at night (it was, after all, after bedtime) and Katie learned quickly that sobbing just woke him up and resulted in her needing to make him endless stacks of peanut butter and sugar sandwiches or sit in front of the telly watching whatever was on to keep him quiet. Or else, when those tactics failed, there was Gage's screaming tantrums that always brought the neighbors round to see what Sean was doing to his children. In which case, Katie would be forced to smile and say something along the lines of "thanks but Dad's gone out for fags or chips or what have you and Gage was just having a strop on and he'll be quiet, I swear." The key thing was always, as she figured out, to give an excuse that involved Sean being just around the corner. Her father had enough pity stored for being a single parent that the neighbors would forgive him for needing five minutes' break - eight hours to go work, on the other hand, was something different altogether. It all still took a noticeable toll on Katie's education. Despite the fact that she was held back and entered a year late, Katie didn't do well in school. Her father didn't place much of a value on studies and while she wanted to be one of the smart girls and earn that sort of attention, the fact of the matter was, she was simply too tired to pay any attention in class. But neither was she a problem or a handful and so her teachers were content to let Katie sit in the back of the classroom and struggle. Gage had the same problems when he entered, affected as they both were by a life of continual upheaval, and so, very early on, both Jones children grew consigned to their own failure. She wasn't entirely convinced of it, however, until she was nine. That was the year that Katie changed her name to Katharine and went about telling everyone she was related to a movie star. There were a group of girls in her school that Katie wanted to be a part of, and badly - all of them from middle-class homes with names like Sophia and Clare and homes that had all of the glass in their windows and fathers who wore suits to go to work. Calling herself Katharine was part of her attempt to be like those girls. She started doing her hair and trying hard to press her clothes and look as if she had the sort of life that she imagined of them. The problem was, she tried too hard. The attempts finally ended when one of the girls in the group spread it around school that Katie had lice (she didn't) and she was so hurt and embarrassed that she stopped her attempts to fit into that group altogether. At this point, she started nicking things from shops. Little things at first, but they were things that she could give another crowd of girls that she'd fallen in with. She used the items she stole to buy friendships with these kids and as Katie grew more and more entangled with them, the items she stole began to get bigger and the ruses more elaborate. Sean never noticed - or if he did notice, he said nothing - and Gage was generally tugged along behind her when she did it. A kid brother made someone look a lot less suspicious and he was easy enough to mollify if she swiped a piece of candy on his behalf later on. Things would have gotten worse, perhaps, had it not been for her attempt to join up with her dad when she was almost eleven. Telling him all about her "skills," Katie was surprised when Sean gave her the belt rather than praise. He didn't want her doing it, he told her and he was damn sure while she was living under his roof that she wasn't going to. And so, after another move, separating her from her friends, she stopped the behavior, spending Saturday mornings staring out of the window of their flat instead of cruising the shops for items to snatch. And then came the letter. Had it not been for her actions right before it arrived, Kate's quite sure that Sean wouldn't've let her go to Hogwarts. But a boarding school, however odd the offer, was another way of getting a troublesome daughter off his hands and with any luck, off the same streets on which he was working. At the time, it seemed like a good idea and so, off she went. But when she got there, it wasn't the experience that everyone else had of the school. Most muggleborns seemed to find Hogwarts a haven - something that wasn't the case for Katie at all. The house system seemed a repeat of her bad experiences with cliques and while she was sorted in a house known for its loyalty, Katie didn't bestow her own cheaply. She didn't quite fit amongst many of the other Puffs and while she'd learned in primary school how to fade into the background enough to pass, it wasn't something that she liked. She missed loud stereos and computers and all of the things that Hogwarts didn't have - and while magic was pretty neat, the only subject in which she felt comfortable and happy was Care of Magical Creatures. After all, animals were animals, even when they had two heads. Summers, however, were entirely different. In compensation for her quiet behavior in the wizarding world, Katie exploded in the world she did know, her presence strong as she moved through the alleys and corners of muggle London. She matured quickly, in response to her need for attention, losing her virginity at thirteen and staying out till all hours with the people that she knew at home. Sean breathed a quiet sigh when she returned to school and it only took two summers before he suggested she stay at school for hols. Which, of course, didn't take. What her father didn't understand was that there was a war brewing in her other world and underneath all her brashness, Katie didn't want to be involved. What she wanted was an adult to protect her from all of that but Sean's idea of protecting his children typically consisted of forcing them to deal with things themselves. And so she kept her mouth shut about what was happening, preferring at least the option of having her muggle summers. Regardless, she took the first chance she had of getting out of school and grabbed it. But that left her in an impossible position. Hogwarts doesn't train its muggle students to return to the world in which they were born - endless attempts to find employment were met with a "sorry, dear, but you haven't the qualifications." And yet, Katie couldn't stomach the idea of living in the wizarding world and being told she was too young to fight the war. So she began to do work for her father. Surprisingly, Sean didn't mind her turning to crime, perhaps because he was tired or perhaps he had simply grown resigned to the fact that neither of his children were going to rise above him - Gage was having trouble in school and with drugs, Katie and her inability to find meaningful work. And while she was young, she was smart and good at handling people on the street, a skill learned from years of deceiving others. So she continued. But there was a part of her that couldn't forget the things that she'd known, a tiny piece that longed for the unicorn that had snubbed her in Hogwarts to come up and brush her hand. Amidst all the dirt and cracked pavement of Hackney, she sometimes saw a glimmer like spellfire in the reflection of a broken bottle. Katie started spending her days in Knockturn Alley. Of all the places in the wizarding world, this one felt the most like home. It wasn't long before she was approached by someone who, like her, knew both worlds and asked if she thought she could get him some information. This man was Proinsias Borgin, co-owner of Borgin and Burkes, and he set Katie on a career of information-gathering, using a combination of wizarding and muggle skills to locate artifacts as well as information on their owners and those in the Ministry who were interested in their location. His trade led to referrals to others which in turn resulted in a brisk career in which Katie began to ferret out information of all sorts, from the secrets of individuals to confidential material within the Ministry. In a sense, she became one of the hubs of the Network, often serving as connection as well as source, locating individuals and bringing them together to accomplish missions directed towards artifact retrieval. As she began her rise in the wizarding world, the Jones' fortunes at home began to plummet. Her father did a short stint in prison, meeting his current girlfriend not long after and deciding to open a pawn shop when Bridget became pregnant in an attempt to go legitimate. While Katie still lives at home, she hates Bridget and the situation in general that has her supporting her father's attempt to carve out a decent life for his new family in a way that he didn't for her. Yet, there's not much choice in the matter and she loves Sean and Gage enough to acquiesce. Trivia Ethics/Morals/Code of Honor: As part of the Network, Katie governs herself with a set of personal rules that might not be easily apparent to anyone who sees her strictly as a criminal. The first, learned the hard way, is to refrain from alcohol or drug use (though she will feign it or pay bartenders extra to bring her water and call it vodka). Another is her sense of loyalty and retribution - it takes a lot to earn Katie's trust and her loyalty but once had, it is given permanently. She is fierce where it comes to those who she has given protection to, even if it is only the protection of a closed mouth, and doesn't hesitate in trying to bring down those people who would try to harm them. Likewise, she doesn't deal in information or steal from that group of people. She has no compunction at all attacking government and in fact, feels completely justified in doing so. Personal Goals: Katie is driven, though it would be difficult for her to define exactly why she's driven. While she finds Sean's goal of making the family upstanding frustrating because he wouldn't do it for her, ultimately, that's her goal as well. She wants the Joneses to rise out of poverty and her siblings to make good lives for themselves. Likewise, she intends to convince her father to do the same. She isn't as worried about her own morality, believing herself strong enough to leave the life that she's created when she's done what she set out to do. In the context of her professional goals, Kate would eventually like to create an information network that spans Europe. She sees this as somewhat impossible and possibly a sign of worrying megalomania on her part, but it gives her something to work towards. She would also like to break into the Department of Mysteries someday and read their files but she's well aware that it's the last thing she'll ever do and as such, has held off on even the suggestion. Amortentia Potion: Freshly laundered towels, coffee, apple blossoms. Plots This character's role is to be basically an information dump and I'll admit that openly. I see her as someone who could feed Astoria tidbits for stories if needed, sell other characters out, steal information from the Ministry, organize groups to conduct heists if the Network characters have trouble getting together, etc. But that's a vague description of plot so here are three specific ideas. * Katie is paid to deliberately pass false information to one party from another. However, for some reason, her ethics interfere and she gives that person the truth. * She joins up with a group of wizarding protestors (maybe someone like Wizards for a Better Future from WaO) just to get information and gets in way over her head as she discovers they're secretly involved in protesting to ruin the reputation of a leftist wizarding political group and promote someone else's secret agenda. * While smuggling goods into the country, she discovers that what she's brought in isn't artifacts but creatures - dangerous ones. (Something like a Nundu, maybe?) And they're breeding. (Yes, I know, but I needed one potentially cracky idea even it screams Tribbles.) Meta Journal: invention PB: Lily Allen Player: Gwen Category: Characters Category: The network